A new playbook for romance in a film that successfully deals with mental illness

The last time a romantic comedy was nominated for an Oscar was in 1997 and it was for As Good as it Gets, a quirky little gem starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.

It didn't win. That year the Oscar was picked up by Titanic, James Cameron's epic tale of love and historic tragedy.

That the Oscars have ignored the romantic comedy is no grand revelation, while there have been films that were nominated and indeed went on to win 'Best Film,' possessing elements of the genre.

The overriding reason for their win or nomination has rested on more weighty considerations. The Academy may very well be accused of being self-conscious when it comes to conferring on something as popular as a romantic comedy the accolade of 'Best Film.'

It is this very reason that makes Silver Linings Playbook, such an interesting movie, with eight nominations including one in every acting category, the movie is enjoying genre-defying acknowledgment.

For a while now, those in the know have been sounding the death knell for the romantic comedy, criticising the derivative nature of the content and the assembly line churning of film after film.

Every once in a while a film has risen to the top of the pile and touched the collective sentimentality of the movie-going audience, but more often than not it has been assigned to the most feared predicament that can befall a film, one of that which has "come and gone".

The clever effervescence of Nora Ephron's writing or the lovable neurosis of an Annie Hall (winner 1977) are things of the past, or so it was felt.

But more than the commercial fate of a film in the genre was the bypassing of its merits as a "work of art". Or indeed that of the comedy genre in its entirety.

Could this be the reason why the Master of the Everyday Neurosis, Woody Allen, despite his several nominations and wins, chooses to bypass the Oscars, year after year, having attended only once in 2002 and that too in acknowledgment of Hollywood's support to his city post 9/11.

The biographer Richard Lax, has explained Allen's attitude to the "biggest night in showbiz":

"It's really impossible, as he puts it, to judge art, that it's so subjective, you can't really say, well, this performance is better than that, or that writing is better than this and that, if you get caught in the trap of relying on other people, however great they are to tell you whether you're any good, you're either going to consciously or subconsciously start playing to that group".

It's a compelling argument and holds a kernel of indivisible truth when it comes to the "idea" of artistic freedom and the very aspirations or enticements that become traps along the creative journey.

However while keeping in view Allen's rather stringent mantra on acknowledgment, the success of Silver Linings Playbook is worth a celebration for a much loved albeit increasingly watered-down genre.

Bradley Cooper plays a man dealing with bi-polar disorder

Based on the novel, Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick, the film explores the development of a romantic relationship between two people with competing neuroses.

It is a deeply complex and engaging narrative that is elevated from the depths it could have plummeted to by the light touch employed by the director and also the screenwriter and the actors.

That mental illness is a modern day reality is inarguable; the fact that it finds so little mention in our popular culture is deeply troubling.

The social stigma associated with the suffering from mental illness is debilitating and compounds the marginalisation experienced by the sufferer. In our attempts to define and redeem the "normal", we cease to recognise that this is a definition that is constantly evolving.

When a film, a popular medium in its essence, chooses to speak for that experience in terms that exist as mere footnotes on a regurgitated narrative, this attempt must be applauded.

Especially when it takes into account emotions that are the reserve of the "normal", emotions and bonds such as love and family.

The film shines a light on the human experience despite its vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities that are enhanced in a way that only mental illness facilitates.

Jennifer Lawrence won best actress at the Oscars for her role in Silver Linings Playbook

And vulnerabilities not brought on by extenuating external factors like war or natural disaster, but those of the mind; sometimes only one mind.

For in one mind there can exist many worlds. Bringing to the fore the triumph of the human spirit, that one big arc that all films in small and large measure aspire to.

As we all know, Silver Linings Playbook didn't take home the Oscar for the Best Film in Sunday's ceremony, that honour having gone to a film where America wins (no offence to Canada).

However, Jennifer Lawrence did win Best Actress for her portrayal of a female character who so eloquently or rather hysterically defends her right to be free of judgment as a woman and as someone dealing with her own neurosis.

This is a film of small triumphs on so many accounts that the "big" loss hardly registers.

The writer wrote Almost Single and scripted the story for the much-acclaimed film Kahaani